This specification relates to presenting online content items in combination with online publications, and more particularly to a network-based system and method for pre-fetching online content items for low latency display to a user during a presentation of an online publication.
Internet users are able to view publications (e.g., video publications) on user devices. At least some of these publications include movies, television programs, and other videos that the user views with, for example, their mobile computing device. These publications may be online publications (e.g., Internet-streaming videos) or offline publications (e.g., videos stored on the mobile computing device), and are displayed along with online content items (e.g., video advertisements) where the online content item is displayed at a predetermined time during the display of the publication (e.g., before, during, or after).
In some known systems, a video publication is displayed on a user device, and the video publication reaches a point when a video advertisement is to be displayed to the user, the user device transmits a call to an online content provider. The online content provider serves an appropriate online content item to the user device for displaying. However, in some cases, the online content provider may not have an appropriate online content item to provide to the user and instead may have to instruct the user device to request online content items from one or more other content providers. Each time a call is made by the user device to a content provider, or by the online content provider to other online content providers, these operations cause further delay in serving and displaying the online content item to the user. In addition, some formats of online content items (e.g., video advertisements) may require a longer buffer time, which may cause additional delays. These delays can frustrate the user.